1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to agricultural equipment and, more particularly, to an apparatus to control the delivery of product, such as seed, from a main product storage container to multiple auxiliary storage containers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern agricultural planters are commonly equipped with one or more main seed hoppers that provide seed (or other granular product) in a forced air stream to multiple auxiliary seed hoppers. Each auxiliary seed hopper may be associated with one or more seed dispensing row units. Generally, the seed is entrained in an air/seed mixture that is delivered from the main seed hopper to the auxiliary seed hoppers
In a conventional arrangement, multiple hoses will be run from the main seed hopper to the individual auxiliary seed hoppers. The length of the hoses connecting the auxiliary seed hoppers to the main hopper varies. This can create an unbalanced air distribution between hose runs of different lengths. More particularly, the shortest hose may get a disproportionate amount of air compared to the longest hose (commonly called preferential flow). This drawback is exacerbated as the number of rows of seed units increases for larger seeding machines.
One proposed solution has been to use a single hose to provide an air/seed mixture to more than one auxiliary seed hopper using a splitter or flow divider. Examples of such configurations are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,025,010 and 8,276,530. These flow dividers are two-way splitters resulting in a reduction by about one-half of the number of hoses, however, in these arrangements, it is difficult to control fluidization and seed bridging/plugging can occur. The number of hoses on larger machines remains excessive.
Two-way splitters suffer from a number of further drawbacks. It is difficult to control the height of seeds in the master row (the row unit on which the splitter is mounted). It is difficult to control seed-on-seed impact at the intersection of master and slave hoses. It is difficult to reduce air velocity through the splitter outlet when only one slave row is supplied with seed often causing the hose to the slave row to be overfilled with seed. Keeping slave hoses clean remains a problem.
What is needed in the art is a technique for reducing the number of required hoses while improving seed delivery.